


Lift Your Head and Look Out the Window

by torakowalski



Category: Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/pseuds/torakowalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t just leave,” Mae argues, following him along the landing and down the stairs.  “I’m not going to let you leave.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lift Your Head and Look Out the Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I've always wanted to write in this fandom, so thank you for giving me the opportunity.

“Are you crazy?” Mae asks him, voice rising to a really impressive peak.

“Probably,” Jamie tells her cheerfully and carries on stuffing clothes into plastic bags. He really needs a suitcase. Or a magically transportable wardrobe. He wonders if that’s possible.

“Are you listening to me?” Mae snaps.

“Yes.” Jamie picks up two overflowing carrier bags and magics the rest of them to follow him. Sometimes super-powerful magic is really useful. “I’m just not changing my mind.”

“You can’t just leave,” Mae argues, following him along the landing and down the stairs. “I’m not going to let you leave.”

Uh oh, that’s her not-going-to-back-down voice. Jamie sighs and turns around on the stairs. “You’re not actually the boss of me,” he reminds her. “The Market – ”

“I’m not talking about the Market,” Mae tells him, like that’s unreasonable, like that isn’t the only thing she talks about most of the time these days. “I’m talking as your big sister.”

“Oh,” Jamie says, widening his eyes. He grins. “Still no. Excuse me.”

She plants her feet and sticks her hands on her hips and Jamie really, really doesn’t want to argue with her, but it looks like he’s going to have to.

“Look,” he says, sighing and sitting down on the stairs. All the bags settle themselves around him and he feels a bit like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.

Mae looks at him suspiciously for a minute like she thinks he’s going to try to escape by slithering through her legs, then sits next to him, crossing her legs and knocking her boots together.

“All right,” she says, folding her arms and turning to face him. “Convince me that this isn’t the stupidest plan ever to exist.”

“Okay.” Jamie squares his shoulders; he can do this. Mae has always listened to him and supported him and while he doesn’t need her to support him this time, he still wants her to. “One. Seb and I need somewhere to live, so moving into Black Arthur’s just makes sense.”

“You can live here,” Mae tells him, like she’s been telling him for weeks. “Aunt Edith won’t care. And Seb can go back to – ” She trails off, looking pained.

“He can’t go back into foster care,” Jamie tells her firmly, even though he’s pretty sure she already agrees. “They’ll want to know where he was all the time he was with Gerald and, anyway, he’d be miserable.”

Seb being miserable makes Jamie miserable these days, it’s sort of horrible but Jamie still wouldn’t swap it.

“All right,” Mae sighs, “I’ll give you that one. But we could sort something out for Seb. The Market or, well, okay, not the Market but something could be done. That can’t be your only argument.”

“Oh it’s not,” Jamie promises her. He holds up two fingers. “Two, I can’t run a Circle from my aunt’s house, that’s just embarrassing. No one would take me seriously.”

Mae doesn't look convinced. “Jamie, you’re seventeen years old, they’d probably understand.”

Jamie shakes his head quickly. “Exactly. Exactly.” It's nice of her to make his argument for him. “All these people are trusting me to lead them, I can’t _be_ seventeen.” He’s terrified, really, if he stops to think about it. Which is why he’s been trying not to think about it, since he made his decision.

Mae looks really sad. “You don’t have to do this,” she says, eyes all wide with concern. Mae only ever turns that expression on him, which is usually something he enjoys, but he wishes that just this once, he could be treated to the same caustic disinterest that everyone else gets when she thinks they’re being stupid.

Jamie nods quickly. “Yeah, I do.” He picks at the bright pink material of her tights, pinching out an inch of fabric then letting it spring back against her leg. It’s easier not to look at her while he explains. “Otherwise all this – ” He waves his left arm, the prosthetic where his hand should be still weirdly weighted. “It’s all – ”

Otherwise the fact that their mum’s dead and they don’t have a home and he’s lost his hand forever, if he doesn’t take control of something out of all of this then it will all have been for nothing.

Mae nods. She gets it, just like he’d known she would. She’s running the Goblin Market, for heaven’s sake, of course she gets it.

“Okay,” she says, hitting her own thighs with a decisive double pat. Her eyes are bright when they finally manage to look at each other again, and Jamie knows that his are too.

They sniff in a fairly synchronised example of genetic disgustingness and then laugh at each other.

“Oh, fuck, come here,” Mae says and pulls him into a hug. It’s hard to hug on the stairs without falling down them but they make it work. Jamie buries his face in her shoulder and breathes her in and tries not to feel like this is the end of something. He’s not moving that far away, not really.

“Right,” he says, when they’ve pulled apart. “That was touching and heartfelt, wasn’t it? Lovely stuff.” He stands up and doesn’t complain when she collects up half his bags after doing the same.

“Don’t even think about bringing your washing back here,” Mae tells him in a fairly convincingly steady voice. “I’m not doing it and Aunt Edith would probably have a fit if she had to touch dirty boy clothes.”

“Hey, my clothes are spotless,” Jamie complains, following her into the sitting room.

They find Seb and Nick exactly where they left them, at opposite sides of the room, only now they’ve progressed from pointedly ignoring each other and moved onto agressive glaring.

“Wow,” Jamie says, faux-impressed, “Did one of you steal the other one’s Buzz Lightyear toy again? I’ve warned you about that.”

They blink and look away from each other, finally, but it’s a grumpy sort of détente and it’s not going to last long. Jamie adds that to his ever-growing mental to-do list. It would be so nice, he thinks sadly, if only his best friend and his boyfriend could be civil to each other. Mostly people’s were, weren’t they? Although no one else could possibly have a best friend quite like Nick Reeves.

“Ready?” Seb asks, looking over at Jamie and then to the bags that Mae’s still carrying. He looks sort of guilty for a second, like he thinks he’s stealing Jamie away, so Jamie sets the world back into motion again.

“Yep,” he says brightly, crossing over to Seb, “so let’s be off. Mavis, Nicholas, a delight as always.”

Mae rolls her eyes and Nick shakes his head. “I’m driving you there,” Nick says gruffly. “You’ll only get lost by yourself.”

“We can take the underground,” Seb says, which is what Jamie would have told him too, only he wouldn’t have said it in quite such a murderous tone.

“It’s not done to growl at people who are offering you a lift,” he reminds Seb, keeping his tone light because Seb is much less happy to be lectured at than Nick is. Seb’s kind of a delicate flower and difficult to negotiate sometimes but Jamie’s having fun learning.

“We’ll be fine,” he repeats to Jamie, giving him a meaningful look like Jamie would otherwise not have noticed that Seb would rather set himself on fire than owe Nick for giving them a lift.

“Yes, we will,” Jamie agrees cheerfully, pushing one of his bags into Seb’s hand and linking their arms together. “We can make Nick a cup of tea when we get home. He’ll be our first guest. It’ll be lovely.”

“Jamie,” Seb complains, but Jamie knows when he’s winning. He presses closer against Seb’s side, grateful that Mae is temporarily distracting Nick by sticking her tongue down his throat.

From the look of them, it isn’t a hardship.

“Seb,” Jamie echoes. He leans up and kisses the corner of Seb’s mouth. “Please make an effort,” he whispers, “just today.”

Just today because today is a big day; Jamie’s moving out of home and he’s terrified and he really just needs everyone to be friends. Just today.

Seb hardly ever takes the lead when it comes to kisses, always lets Jamie kiss him first, like he thinks each time that Jamie’s going to have changed his mind. He does right now though, kissing Jamie slowly and softly.

Jamie closes his eyes and leans into him, just taking a moment.

“Thanks, Nick,” Seb says over Jamie’s shoulder once they’ve pulled apart. He sounds like he’s being made to walk over broken glass, but at least he’s saying it. “That’d be good.”

Whatever Nick’s reply was going to be turns into a grunt when Mae elbows him in the side. “Come on then,” he says instead, striding past them.

Mae follows. She isn’t letting Nick carry any of her bags, which presumably means she’s coming too.

Good.

“Ready?” Seb asks, squeezing Jamie’s arm.

Jamie takes a look around Aunt Edith’s living room. This isn’t his home so he’s not sad to be leaving here. He’s excited, just slightly, but it’s growing.

He’s leaving here and travelling to meet up with his Circle and they’re going to do things right. The house might have previously belonged to Black Arthur, his mother’s killer might have claimed the bedroom on the ground floor with the nice view over the garden and he might have no idea how they’re going to pay the bills. But he’s got Mae and Nick and Sin and Alan and the Market; he’s got Seb and he just knows, okay? He knows that it’s going to work out fine.

“Ready,” he agrees and lets Seb take the final bag so they can lace their fingers together as they walk out to the car.

/End


End file.
